0:00 - Introduction
0:29 - Favorite States and Landscapes
0:56 - Impressions of California and Texas
1:28 - Naomi Wolf's Experience
5:53 - Living in a Bubble
10:28 - Fantasy of Leftists
13:10 - Caring vs Exploitation
20:16 - Difficulty in Giving Feedback
20:36 - Right-Wing Female Influencers
22:01 - Anxiety vs Excitement
22:59 - Uncertainty in Ukraine Situation
23:13 - Joy of Fatherhood and Peaceful Parenting
26:53 - Glare on the Screen
28:41 - Glitch in Novel
33:45 - Manifesting Potential
36:30 - Road to Hell: Paved with Excuses
38:00 - The Blame Game
44:29 - Society's Excuses
50:57 - Inner Voice Strength
1:01:03 - Battling Excuses
1:07:49 - Business Concerns
1:15:14 - Time Management
Today, we engaged in a diverse conversation touching upon various topics across different platforms. Despite the brevity of today's show due to a transition to a voice call later on, we delved into intriguing discussions. One topic we explored was the different attributes of various states, reminiscing on favorite ones such as the picturesque landscapes of northeastern states, the amiable people in the Midwestern states, and the historical allure of California. Moreover, I expressed my fondness for those who engage in physical work, appreciating their dedication and skills.
Transitioning into a deeper discussion, we examined the story of Naomi Wolf's experience with deplatforming and the repercussions of exclusion for individuals who previously engaged in similar behaviors. We delved into the complexities of social dynamics within ideological groups, touching upon themes of exclusion and a lack of empathy prevailing in certain circles. Furthermore, we pondered on the intricate nature of friendships and the shock that ensues when long-standing relationships dissolve due to ideological disparities. Reflecting on the essence of bonds and the challenges of navigating varying perspectives within societal circles, we contemplated the importance of understanding and empathy in human interactions.
As the conversation progressed, we delved into the concept of conformity and its influence on social acceptance, accompanied by a discourse on betrayal in friendships and the underlying power dynamics within relationships. Audience engagement sparked discussions on topics ranging from anxiety and relationships to broader societal issues. Emphasizing the significance of personal responsibility and realizing one's potential, we shared personal anecdotes illustrating the trials of progress and their impact on relationships. Encouraging listeners to eschew excuses and embrace self-ownership for personal growth, I highlighted the perilous nature of excuses as hindrances to development, likening them to toxic environmental factors impeding progress and self-fulfillment.
In subsequent segments, I underscored the necessity of challenging oneself, avoiding complacency even in areas of innate proficiency, and embracing challenges for personal growth. Distinguishing between explanations and excuses for actions, I expressed caution regarding commitments, particularly in ventures such as producing physical book copies, stressing the importance of resource management. Lastly, promoting audience engagement through donations and discussions on diverse topics, we explored the ongoing theme of self-improvement and perseverance in the face of challenges, urging listeners to confront vanity and excuses in pursuit of their full potential.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. It is Sunday morning, and we are chatting away with a variety of people on a variety of platforms. We're going to do a shorter show today, and then we're going to skip to a voice call for the donors to talk more about lack of feedback stuff that we talked about on Friday. Taylor has asked me, what is my favorite state? What is my favorite state? Oh, gosh, that's a tough one. That's a tough one.
[0:29] I mean, the northeastern states are fantastic for, you know, woods and hiking and, you know, old school British style, like literally New England, old school British style landscapes. The Midwestern states have some of the best people. California, see, I was around in California like 30 plus years ago when I was doing a lot of business out there and it was paradise. It was absolute, absolutely glorious.
[0:57] Absolutely glorious. Almost nothing better. I did a lot of work in Texas because environmental and oil stuff and all of that. And I thought the Texas people were great. I have, I mean, I suppose it's a little bit unusual among, quote, intellectuals, right? But I have a real, I take real pleasure in spending time with people who work with physical things.
[1:25] This, I mean, I, It's funny.
[1:28] I was reading, Naomi Wolf wrote a book recently on her experience as being deplatformed for pointing out some of the risks with female menstruation and the vaccines.
[1:39] And it's wild. She's very intelligent. She's very charming. She's a great writer. And blind as a bat. you know i mean it's funny you know because i love her in a way because i mean she has done some really brave things and and i really appreciate that but absolutely blind is bad because she talks about like she's been in the public eye for close to 40 years right she started writing in her her 20s so getting published and she says you know like i used to go to all these gallery openings and and and big expensive dinner parties and and she uses a great conceit conceit is not a negative word it's just a sort of literary device which is if you want to talk about history you don't just say well this happened and this happened and this happened you have to have a literary device to make it more understandable and more sequential, and so she's like well i was moving and i unpacked this and i unpacked that and this brought me back memories of this and then she says i unpacked this this tablecloth i got from india that i used to put on my tables and i have cheap wine and cut up bread and turkey stew she says the The only thing I know how to make and not fail at. And people would come over and all of these glittering conversations. And we thought of ourselves as the West Wing, change the world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's absolutely completely shocked.
[2:56] When she says, like, I did what I've been doing for like 35 years, which is writing, telling truth to power and writing about women's health issues. And when I got word that there were these irregular menstrual periods, women who'd gone through menopause, getting bleeding, some women having two periods a month, like I wrote about that because that's an important thing. And she was like immediately deplatformed. Nobody would talk to her. All of her former friends vaporized and disappeared and despawned and vanished. They went straight to the back rooms. and she was just unpersoned by everyone in her social circle. And she was like, it's so shocking to me because, you know, we considered ourselves open-minded and this is all right up her alley, women's issues, corporate corruption, truth to power, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, from the outside, it's, I can't read that when I'm going to bed. It's from the outside. It's like, oh, Naomi, love you to death, honey, sweetie, darling, but.
[3:56] You are concerned about exclusion and deplatforming. You know, quick question. Did you ever have any conservatives at these glitterati events? Would you ever have invited, I don't know, Charles Murray or someone like that to talk about the things that he talks about? Did you ever? And the answer, of course, is no, that they were rabidly exclusionary and bigoted against half the population. And so she seems kind of shocked that this incredibly exclusionary and bigoted group turned out to be exclusionary and bigoted. Because that's what happens, right? They create a negative label, which is a sort of sky laser they can put on everyone's forehead. Negative label, you know, extreme right-wing, anti-vaxxer, you know, whatever it is, racist. So they create these negative labels and they charge them up, you know, you know, you charge up the defibrillators, right? They charge them up, and then they just, right? So they charge up these negative labels, and this is weaponization of language, and it's actually more civilized in some ways than duels and so on, right? Although duels did tend to keep society just a smidge more polite.
[5:10] And so they charged up these negative language, and then when she stepped out of line, it was applied to her, and she was unpersoned from everyone because that's what they've done to everyone before. So when she's inside the circle of liberalism, she doesn't see all of the people who are excluded based on negative labels. And then when she does something that gets a negative label applied to her, she is then excluded, just as she and her group, I assume, excluded conservatives and people like Charles Murray, other kinds of social scientists, people with, quote, unacceptable opinions, or anything that goes against the victim-victimizer narrative and tries to explain human disparities in different ways. They're all unpersoned, right?
[5:54] So, yeah, it's wild to see what a bubble people live in. And this is like the vaults, right? The vaults in the fallout, right? They just live in this bubble. And they're vaguely aware of the outside world, but they don't understand it.
[6:13] So everyone who has the... They all wielded horrible labels against others. Like, no question. This is an entire group that would have, attacked and dismissed any kind of populism, any kind of nationalism, nationalism uh any kind of smaller government stuff uh and so on right they would have used the negative labels to attack and exclude anybody who tried to went their way in right i mean in my heyday could you could you imagine me being invited to a naomi wolf uh soiree right well it's impossible right because the negative labels have been applied to me and and so on right so they all wield these negative labels, extreme right-wing reactionary right and then when the weapons that people have created to exclude others are then used to exclude them there's this deep shock and that deep shock speaks to a lack of empathy right when you think of all the people who aren't invited to the party and are actively kept out of the party.
[7:26] Then when you're cast out of the party, it's deeply shocking because you haven't empathized with everyone who's kept out of the party because you just applied negative labels to the conservatives, the Republicans, the minarchists, the whatever. And so you've ferociously excluded other people. And part of your, this isn't about Naomi Wolf in particular, it's just this general mindset. Part of your attack on the world is to create this entirely enviable social circle. The people are like, oh, you're going to gallery openings. You're giving little speeches here and there. You have wonderful dinner parties. And it's just this advertisement of the cool kids, right? Like, hey, we're all the cool kids. I'm sitting next to this finance guy and I'm sitting next to this artist guy and across me is a famous novelist and it's sparkling conversations and everybody's laughing and the food is wonderful and the music is sublime and you know, and then so-and-so gives a little impromptu concert like he's at a coffee shop, even though he's a famous musician. Like, it's just like, Oh, it's an advertisement of.
[8:36] Everything that everyone wants to consume. And this is even particularly more true now in the age of selfies, right? Because in the past, these things you just kind of heard about them now, you know, social media and so on. So they're creating this, quote, wonderful world, and then they're excluding people as punishment for non-orthodoxy to leftist beliefs as a whole.
[9:00] And part of talking about how wonderful the life is is to make sure that everyone knows who's excluded just how wonderful it all is to be at these openings and galleries and parties and blah blah you're going to see these plays and with people you know and someone you know wrote the play and right the after party and all of that and you know it sounds fairly pleasant like Like, honestly, I'm not a big socializing kind of guy. I do like to socialize, but, you know, I would find it. I would think of all the philosophy that wasn't getting done when I'd be going to all these parties. But, you know, it's fun. And certainly if you're younger, right, this sort of sex in the city lifestyle seems like, oh, here's a gallery opening and here's an all-night art exhibit you can go to with Mikhail Baryshnikov and things like that, right? And so it is very interesting to see the shock that she has when she's cast out of the heaven that is created as an exclusion punishment to those who don't conform, right? We create this wonderful social circle. If you put one foot wrong, you're out. And she's applied that. She's applied that to others. Again, I don't know her personally, but people in that world apply this exclusionary filter. When she says, well, we felt like the West Wing, right? Well, that's very clear. The West Wing were leftists. Well, it was the fantasy of leftists, not the reality.
[10:28] And...
[10:36] When she is excluded because she stepped on the landmine, metaphorically, she stepped on the landmine of a negative label, in this case, anti-vaxxer, creating vaccine hesitancy, right? Because anti-vaxxer in general was associated with being conservative, right? Republican, Christian, and so fundamentalist, right?
[11:01] So when she adopted the negative labels that her entire group had used to exclude others and then that was used to exclude her she was shocked and what she was shocked at is the lack of, bond right because it is kind of shocking honestly for for a lot of people when you've had these these decades-long relationships, business, and personal, and friendship, and so on. And she said, like, she'd written for just about every famous newspaper known to man. So famous newspapers that were always eager to get one of her articles stopped publishing her like that, right? She was just un-person. People wouldn't return her calls. She couldn't get anything published. She was deplatformed, and everybody just completely vanished from her. And it's like, ah, it's kind of weird for people because you think you're on a common mission and you care about each other, you care about the world, right? And then when you do something that's unpopular and you get hit with these negative labels and then everybody pretends like you never existed, that is kind of strange, right?
[12:18] And, again, I'm not talking about Naomi. I don't know Naomi Wolf's mind other than what she's written and so on, right? So I don't know her history. I know some of the controversies around her books. The beauty myth where she said, what, 150,000 American girls a year are dying from anorexia when it's, like, way, way, way lower. So I can't read her mind. So let's just talk about Sally, right? It's just Sally, just some made-up woman who would be part of this circle. And I can, because she's a character of mine, I can talk about her, whereas I don't know, of course, Naomi Wolf's history or inner thoughts or what she's done. So Sally is part of this group that all claims to care about the world and care about the poor and care about the underprivileged and care about equality. And they just, they care and they care and they care. And they talk to each other about how much they care.
[13:11] And they're agonized by the suffering of the world. And so you believe that you're part of people who just really care about others, and they just want to make the world a better place, and they care about women, and they care about minorities, and they care about the underprivileged, and so on, right? They care, they care, they care. But then a very strange thing happens. If you put one foot wrong, and then you're suddenly vaporized, then Sally would look at her social group and would say, holy crap.
[13:41] How can they care about the abstract poor, when they don't even care about our friendship of 30 years, do you see what I'm saying how can these people care about, the poor under-trod people in Burundi other side of the world how can they care about all of those people when they don't even have a bond with a friend of theirs for 30 years.
[14:14] When, I mean, one of the main purposes of friendship is a buffer against error. Right, one of the main purposes of friendship is a buffer against error, because we all make mistakes, we all say things that turn out to be false or wrong, we all have our prejudices. So friends give each other some leeway, right? Isn't that sort of the point? I mean, if you've been in a long-term relationship, right, you've had the occasional bad day, right? And so you think of the worst day of a long-term relationship. And if you say, okay, well, if that was our first date, we wouldn't go forward, right? Like if the first, let's say you'd be married for 30 years, think of your worst day with each other. If that was the first date, you wouldn't go forward with the relationship, right? But because you're married and you're invested in each other, you have room for bad days and you continue. Right. This all makes sense. Right. So one of the purposes of friendship is as a buffer against error. And it goes on both ways, right? Or not a buffering as error, because you don't even know if there's an error, right? But it's a buffer against what you perceive of as bad behavior, what you perceive of as mistakes or whatever, right? So Sally's been friends with these people for like 30 years.
[15:37] And she does exactly, she didn't change, right? She does exactly what she did before. And this is, you know, reference to Naomi Wolf. She's right. She did exactly what she's been doing, which is to write about health issues and skeptical of corporations and so on, right? And women's health issues in particular. There's some really stuff to be admired about with that. So Sally's doing the same thing, but her friends perceive her to have done something wrong or bad. Well, the whole point of friendship is you build up accumulated goodwill to the point where if you do something your friend doesn't like, your friend comes and talks to you about it, right? I mean, if you're online and someone is just really cranky and bad-tempered towards you, and you don't even know that person, you just block them or move on or whatever, right? But if it's your brother or your best friend who's cranky and bad-tempered towards you, you sit down and you have a conversation because you've got a lot invested in the relationship. There's a bond, right? There's a bond. So you deposit with all the good times and the support, And then occasionally there's a withdrawal, which is the bad day, the bad statement, the bad idea, the bad argument, the bad faith, whatever it is, right? Somebody's hangry, right? But it's okay because you've deposited a million dollars of great stuff in the relationship. So when a thousand dollar withdrawal comes out, that's nothing. It's 0.1%, right?
[17:04] And so when you think you've deposited into all of these relationships, and let's say that Sally does something that is, is considered bad by her group. Well, there's 30 years, 30 year friendship. You've, you've broken bread with each other. You've, you know, got pregnant, raised kids, you know, in each other's environment and proximity. You've been on this common mission to improve the world. And I don't, I don't know if you guys have experienced this. It's a pretty wild thing. When you step out of line and, You're gone, right? You're gone. And then all of the people who claim to care so much don't even care about a 30-year friendship.
[17:50] And it's almost impossible for someone like Sally to process that. That the whole thing was an advertisement for conformity, right? If you conform, you get to come to the dinner party. If you don't conform you don't exist like that right that's a wild thing look at all this glittering cool stuff we can do all you have to do is toe the line and you're in but the moment you step out of line out of darkness de-platformed de-personed un-personed de-spawned you glitch out like skate three right so that you participated in, In a sense, Sally is participating in the humiliation ritual called obey and get paid. Obey and get invited. Obey and you have a social circle. Obey and you get to go to fun gallery openings and play openings and you get cool dinner parties with funny, famous, witty people and boom, boom, boom, right?
[18:55] So when Sally gets cast out, effortlessly, she has to look back and say, well, how could they care about abstractions and abstract people if they don't even care about a personal friend for 30 years? Right? Naomi Wolf is talking about one of her oldest and best friends left the entire country without even saying goodbye to Naomi Wolf. I mean, I can't even tell you. I mean, do you have, this is a question to you guys, like do you have a relationship where you're absolutely certain no matter what happens, you're there for each other. There are hiccups, there are problems sometimes, but you're absolutely certain you're there for each other. You know, the ride or die cliche that you're just down with each other and no matter what, you're going to make it through life together, right? Do you have those things? While I'm just waiting for those comments, I wanted to get your comments and thank you. Thank you for the tip. You can, of course, tip here on the app. You can tip at freedomain.com. Appreciate that. All right, let me get to your questions and comments.
[20:16] Somebody says, couldn't join the last stream and wanted to add my thoughts regarding feedback. Parents barely tutored me in my childhood and I had a lot of social issues and yet still got good grades. They always used to over compliment me for this, probably to minimize the issues I experienced. This could be related as to why it's hard for me to give feedback.
[20:37] I appreciate that. What's your opinion on right-wing female influencers attacking men who want traditional women and questioning women's right to vote? This includes Lauren and Southern now as well. Honestly, I'm pretty far from that world, as you can imagine. I didn't used to be, I suppose, but I'm pretty far from that world. I've not been following this.
[21:00] Questions, your thoughts, paganism versus Christianity. What reply would you have for individuals who believe God needs to be taken out of everything? I don't... You have to specify the question a little bit more. Because people who believe God needs to be taken out of everything include physicists and biologists as well as pagans. So you'd have to be a bit more... Did leave a comment or two on Peaceful Parenting book. Not enough, in my opinion. We'll be more mindful of this from now on. Thank you. Naomi's old friends would rather have a bear at a party than her yeah it's Lauren Chen who said that's clever and right she said I believe that women think men are, more dangerous than bears when women stop bringing random men home to sleep with them, Steph did you ever have anxiety before changing jobs I'm looking to leave a bad job but I'm feeling anxiety about it well um So anxiety is one of these words that is usually worth reframing, if this makes sense.
[22:02] It's usually worth reframing anxiety. How do you know it's not excitement?
[22:07] I mean, anxiety is just a negative thing. Anxiety sounds like, oh, well, I've just got to get rid of this negative thing. I've just got to get rid of this anxiety. This is unproductive. This is pointless. I'm just going to talk to myself in circles and so on. So anxiety is you want to do a good job, right? You've got a new challenge and a new job is a challenge, right? You get used to the work environment, you get used to your co-workers, you get used to your new boss, the new structure, the new responsibilities, the new customers. So anxiety is, I want to do a good job and excellence comes out of wanting to do a good job. And like everything in life, we're enthusiastic to do well, we're afraid of doing badly. So you can say the anxiety is the fear of doing badly, the excitement is your potential to do good. So I would focus on the excitement in the opportunity rather than the anxiety and the change.
[23:00] How do you think the situation in Ukraine will end? I honestly feel nervous with how thirsty people seem for escalation. It's too close to politics, but it's not going to be good, obviously. Good morning, Steph. Thank you for your tip. Good morning, Steph.
[23:14] My wife gave birth to our first child over a month ago now. Your content has helped me enormously over the past eight years. I'm so excited to finally be a dad. My wife and I will forever champion peaceful parenting because of you. Thank you for everything you do. Well, congratulations. Congratulations. I really, really appreciate that. Of course, I would assume that even though your wife was in the process of giving birth that you would have stuck in for a live stream. But what's that? There's a very funny picture of a woman agonized in labor in the hospital bed and a guy photographing pizza in front of her saying, had to order in because someone doesn't feel like cooking tonight. It's very funny. So congratulations. That's wonderful. Have you been watching Fallout? Fallout. I've watched up to episode three and don't really want to watch more. Yeah, Fallout is like the testicle surgery channel. You know, I guess you could broadcast it, and I guess it's, you know, vivid, but it's really unpleasant. Yeah, Fallout is revolting. Like, it's hell. It's hell. And I think everybody who's working on that show must just be incredibly traumatized and dissociated in order to produce such horrors.
[24:22] Hi steph i oh and i've done some reviews of it so you can look at those especially if you're a donor um so hi steph i appreciate you i don't get to participate much but i'm always listening and love supporting the course thank you very much i appreciate that i appreciate that.
[24:37] Yes i always wondered why people wouldn't think it would happen to them if the tables turned no empathy it is tough you know it is tough to say i made common cause with people who have no bond.
[24:54] They have no bond. Most people who claim to care about the underprivileged are looking to exploit their resentment to punish the virtuous. Random hookups in the after-party hotels, too, really common. Yeah, could be. Always forget, you do this live. Great work. Good brain. I appreciate that. Thank you. And they only care about the poor who hold the same opinions. Yeah, that's true. And Naomi Wolf talks about, or writes about, how she's retreated from the abstract abstract, glitterati scene, and now is living in the woods with real people.
[25:38] So, yeah, I love these mathematical measures. Accumulated trust, yeah, you put deposits in every time you have a good time. And the negatives in bonded relationships, in positive quality relationships, the negatives are a positive, there are no negatives. This right so you have these conflicts you have these problems and because you've worked through and resolved them your bond gets even stronger right your bond gets even stronger, i definitely had experience i've experienced this kind of lack of bond thing it makes me feel like i wasted my time yeah employers like to create the illusion of a bond we are not a company we are a family to make you walk harder and be loyal but as soon as you're not useful to them anymore they just dumped you without a second thought yes i really really would not, i really really would not work for a place that talked about this as a family because uh you know it seems a little a little culty to me right, all right you have a couple of relationships some people my homies yeah no no unfortunately.
[26:49] Good morning, hard to type on mobile, sun washes out the screen.
[26:54] I appreciate that. But look at the handsome guy where the show is in the reflection of the screen. I've had some of those ends sadly, yeah. Morning. Oh, I have one outside the family. Chris Hedges just got cancelled on Real News Network because they're afraid they will lose their funding slash tax-free status, etc. Anxiety includes a bit of fear, change includes risk. No fear seems like sociopathy. Yeah, people who don't experience anything like that is really chilling. Ah, no, Steph, I don't have friends like that anymore, says someone. As of three weeks ago, I thought I did. I just lost a close friend of five years because he flipped out over the rapture and scripture, etc. I totally disagreed. It didn't speak to me. It doesn't speak to me anymore. It just ended. I didn't see it coming, and I put myself down for not seeing it coming. As there were hints of it, maybe that's my parents speaking through me.
[27:44] Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest with you. My history is littered with people who appear to be close, and then you disagree with them, and you cease to exist in their minds. You just cease to exist in their minds, and it's some chilling stuff, man. It's some really, really chilling stuff. To not have a bond gives people a lot of power. You know that, right? To not have a bond with you gives people a lot of power, right? So what do people say? I do, been friends for 15 years and we've been through a lot. Good for you. All right.
[28:41] Is there a glitch in your novel, Just Poor, in a later chapter? Okay, I'll make a note of that and we'll double check that.
[28:50] Thank you. I will appreciate that. I will look into that. I won't give any spoilers. He says, I lost most of my friends when I got married, bought a house and had a kid. They just drifted away. Friends I've had for 20 years weren't even interested in meeting my son. Yeah, well, you know, progress is brutal in life, right? There's a reason why people avoid progress. They avoid getting married. They avoid settling down. They avoid having kids. They avoid moving on in their life because they know that for a lot of people, it would cost their social life, right? It would cost their social life. People would just vanish from their lives. It's really tough.
[29:38] It's really tough. Yeah, I mean, when I sort of moved on, I mean, I had a couple of big movements in my life, some reasonably good success in university. University, I mean, I think I told you guys, a professor took an entire class to read one of my essays saying it was just about the most perfect thing he'd ever read. Read the whole essay. He'd said he'd never done this before. He read my whole essay out to class. And I was considered to be, you know, top tier and all of that. Until people found out about my philosophy or the philosophy that I practiced. And then I was deplatformed even back then. I just despawned, couldn't get an advisor and all that kind of stuff, right? Right. And so I did pretty well there, but that wasn't sort of moving beyond people in a sense when I, you know, I had to, I had to fight a lot to do well in my business career because I, you know, grew up in a staggeringly poor single mother household. And so I didn't really have anyone who could give me good advice. Right. And so I really had to, you know, just grit my teeth and push forward and try to navigate an extremely unfamiliar world. And I did it pretty well. And I did very well in that world.
[30:58] And the people who came along with me, right? I mean, my friends who played Dungeons and Dragons, well, no, not really.
[31:08] Not really. So who came along then? Of course, I met the love of my life. I got married, had a child. And all of that. And, you know, people, it's hard to figure out exactly how to put it.
[31:29] But when you, when your potential manifests, it's like you're an incandescent light that gives people migraines to be in the presence of, you know, if you ever had this thing where I remember for some reason, I, I spent decades ago, I spent an afternoon watching two movies in a movie theater with, with a friend of mine. One of them was city hall. I think it was with the John Cusack. I can't remember what the other one was pretty bad films, but after like, you know, four four plus hours in the relative dark, right? I came out and it was like, you know, five o'clock, the sun was just setting and coming, you know, it scalds your brain, right? Like burns my brain.
[32:11] And it takes a while for your eyes to adjust. You come out of a dark space into the sun, like a Gestapo swinging lamp of interrogation, you know, drill straight into your brain. It was like a bunch of lasers. And when you begin to achieve your own potential you turn incandescent and it hurts people you know like sunlight to the vampire there's a reason for that right, and so people who are denying their own potential and i understand that evolutionarily speaking accepting your own potential was very dangerous throughout most of human history really dangerous to accept your own potential. Because it puts you in conflict with people in power if you have your own potential. Because if everyone accepted their own potential, we wouldn't need political hierarchies, right? So when you accept your own potential and you begin to manifest your own potential...
[33:12] People it hurts people i don't know if you've had that experience but it is really it's really tough for people it's quite brutal for them in fact and so when you begin to achieve your own potential your friends not all but a lot and definitely some more than others but in general when you begin to achieve your own potential your friends become quite uneasy.
[33:45] Quite uneasy indeed because why not you why not them if you why not them you know and people in particular with me i think that was let's make it about me in particular with me i think that was tough because i had other friends who achieved their own potential but they all came from like Like a friend of mine became a professor of economics, but his father was head of an engineering department at a university. He had a good income and a very literate and intellectual and wealthy and intelligent family. His father, of course, gave him tons of advice on how to achieve his goals in academia because his father had achieved that. And to great credit, I have no negative things about that. But when some people achieve their potential, other people can make up excuses like, well, they had it made. Ah, they had it made. They inherited this. They had all of these resources. They held these advantages and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
[34:51] So when I began to really manifest my own potential, for my friends who grew up poor and who grew up in these, you know, really tragic, depressing, airless.
[35:12] Horrible gas lit false lying manipulative and abusive environments which was you know most of my friends in these sort of rank controlled matriarchal manners it was tough and then people said oh well you know but that's good looking and it's like okay well but you know i was losing my hair and all of that so and and i didn't i didn't make i didn't make it in fields where being good looking was a requirement. It wasn't like in the tech field, they require you to be, you know, steel George Chatterstand president, right?
[35:47] So I was able to work and achieve and manifest my potential, and there were no excuses, right? I mean, in fact, I had every reason to never manifest my potential. I mean, it would have been perfectly understandable. And if I hadn't manifested my potential, they'd say, ah, yes, well, you know, the violence and the single mother and the poverty and the, you know, So he had to basically make his way on his own from a very early age because his single mother got institutionalized and so on, right? So there would have been every excuse, right? But to hell with excuses.
[36:30] Like literally, you go to hell with excuses, right? They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No, the road to hell is paved with excuses. And I really, really, really, really, really, really never wanted to let the crappy people in my past win by handing me excuses. Do you know what I mean? That would be to never escape, right? Because trash planet is defined by excuses.
[37:04] Everyone's got an excuse. excuse everyone's got a reason everyone's got an explanation as to what happened and why things didn't work nobody takes responsibility nobody takes self-ownership everybody's got a sad compelling violent laced story as to why they ended up oh i had a bad boss oh he was a great guy but he just changed oh she turned out to be really mean oh uh this this my teacher had it out for me. Oh, this. Oh, that. Oh, the other, right? Everybody's got an excuse. And the excuse is the bottom of the barrel.
[37:47] The excuse is the underworld. The excuse planet is Hades. Excuses are nothing more or less than promises of repetition.
[38:00] Nobody takes ownership for their lives. It's always external forces. Well, it's always this, that, or the other. You know, I had a friend of mine, a very smart guy, took a double major, math and physics. Double major, math and physics, at a very tough university. Because he had a lot of vanity. And he was complaining that the professors were, they graded on a curve, right? So they'd give people virtually impossible exams, and then everybody would get 20%, but they'd grade it up to passing. Now that sucks, right? I mean, that's not a good way to teach people for sure. But rather than say, I was too vain and I took on too much, right? I was one of the smartest guys in high school. that's not the same as being one of the smartest guys in an advanced university.
[38:53] So he just quit university, didn't go back, and never achieved his potential. This is a guy, it was wild, like he used to, he was working, he was so cool and into math this way, that he would take all of the horse race results from the newspaper, stack them up, and he was working on mathematical ways to predict which horses to bet on. Now, I get that's a little crazy and you can't really do that because it's not physics, right? That's a whole bunch of other things. But anyway, he was cool, very smart guy. And we had a lot of great conversations over the years.
[39:32] But the excuse he had was the course is way too tough because nobody can even pass, right? Was he right about that? He was.
[39:50] But maybe if you don't take the double major, like why, why would you take this double major? That doesn't make much sense to me. But rather than adjust his expectations, or even he could say, he could have said, the university is bad because they just do these crushingly hard exams that nobody can pass and then there's a grade you up to a pass. I get that's pretty bad, right? But I mean maybe one of the reasons they do that is a lot of the guys who come in are really vain, because they've been top dog in their junior high and high schools and maybe they're really vain and they need to humble them I don't know it probably is nothing virtuous or positive but.
[40:40] He wouldn't adjust his expectations. Oh, Michael, sorry. About the just poor thing. Is that in the audio book? Or the text? The audio book or the text? If you could let me know. Thank you. Have you ever heard of Joe Dispenza? I have not. Excuses are just terrible. I mean, the universe handed me an infinite number of excuses. And I just won't take them. I just... Excuses are like this devilish come-hither-to-nothing finger. It just beckons you over to a void. And of course... Excuses are a weakening of the will. It's a weakening of your will. It's a weakening of your capacity to, exercise your strength to create and survive.
[42:01] All right, let's see here. Somebody says, I lost my friends in 2017 being pro-Trump and all of that. Yeah, it's tough, man. And so if you don't give yourself excuses i mean i'm telling you the countdown clock, is set if you don't give yourself excuses then you are immediately diverging irrevocably from the people who continue to give themselves excuses right if you don't give yourself excuses excuses, you are now in a silent war. And I'm not kidding about this. Like you were in a silent war with the people who do give themselves excuses. It's a brutal, brutal battle. And I, you know, I wasn't conscious of it for quite some time. You know, I, uh, a friend of mine was languishing in in his career and um i got him an interview for a more senior position and you know you get someone an interview you're kind of putting your own reputation online i didn't even show up didn't even show up to the interview oh i got the wrong day blah blah i never got anywhere.
[43:20] Uh, somebody says I've had to shed all my friends except one since getting married. My wife has been on a similar path. We're both still trying to find quality new friends. It can be difficult having no family or friends, but the rebuild is absolutely worth it. Becoming enlightened can ostracize you from those unwilling to want to embrace growth. Very true. Excuses are like a winning lottery ticket. I don't understand that. A winning lottery ticket actually gets you resources. Excuses keeps you from resources. Uh, but I'm happy to hear the explanation. The best at excuses are always the smart ones. They can rationalize their vices better than the average. Yeah, quite true. Hi, Steph. Good morning, all. In a Toastmaster meeting, I learned through a member's speech the average human lives about 4,000 weeks. I can't unhear this. As someone who spends their career planning weeks of work for myself and others, I'm suddenly smashed in the face that I should probably be spending my time differently. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[44:29] In my university they called them weed out classes they were really hard to make you they were trying really hard to make you drop out yeah, yeah not adjusting expectations leads to burnout absolutely somebody says I can verify in my physics class the professor said on the first day that half the people in this room won't be here in four weeks it was true I think you're right it's a wake up call for vanity yeah I think so.
[44:51] Because what's the point like so what's the point of training someone in physics if they can't be a teacher or get a job because people who are vain can't teach anyone anything because all they do is they they're not in the relationship with the student to elevate the student they're in the relationship with the student to elevate themselves and so if you are full of vanity and arrogance and no empathy no sensitivity or or anything like that if you can't adjust your expectations or deal with failure what's the point of teaching you anything because, you're going to go to grave with that knowledge never benefiting society because you can't, bend your vanity to serve others steph if you don't give excuses what are some tips to take ownership well first of all don't think of it as taking ownership right you don't take ownership ownership, it's sort of like saying, what is the best way to take control of your left leg? Like what? Is it currently being grappled by some tentacle beast in Lord of the Rings? No. Like you don't take control of your left leg. You have control of your left leg. That just is what it is. You kick someone, you did that, right? So you don't take ownership. You have ownership.
[46:11] You have ownership. You can reject that if you want, but even making excuses is exercising self-ownership. I own my excuses. Excuses are just there to make sure you never challenge anyone in authority and that you stay in the stagnant, still green duckweed social circle of doom that you were probably born into. He says, you're not kidding about that silent war. It might be part of the reason and why I gave myself excuses for something despite hearing you talk about this subject a lot, on top of having a sticky note on my monitor saying, no excuses, yeah, good for you. Well, and that kind of happened on Friday, right, when I talked about, for the nth time, my disappointment and pain at the lack of feedback on the Peaceful Parenting book, and I just got a bunch of excuses. And that was instructive, right? That was very helpful. Very helpful. I mean, I think it was a great conversation, but yeah.
[47:16] And of course, you know, we're raised with a society that like everybody who didn't earn your attention has to make excuses. So teachers, if you're bored, do they say, well, I suppose that's my fault for being a bad teacher. Oh, because the teachers, you know, they're forced to be paid. You're usually forced to be there and so on. Right. So certainly, if a kid, if your parents want to homeschool, you've got to go to school. So your teachers, when you're bored, they don't say, well, I guess I've got to up my game as a teacher. They make excuses. And the excuses are, well, you have ADHD. You have a concentration. It's not that I'm boring. It's not that I'm boring. You have a neurological problem, and therefore you need drugs. Yes. I mean, it's like some guy in a bar who's like, well, she doesn't seem that attracted to me, but if I put a powder in her drink, everything will be fine. It's like, wow, eh? It's wild.
[48:27] Somebody says, I wish I could give you more than just the subscription dollars, but I have to thank you so much for your discussion and no excuses. I've lost a significant amount of weight and I'm so much stronger because you have become my inner voice telling me, no excuses. When the alarm goes off and all I want to do is hit the snooze button instead of hit the gym. Yeah, yeah. Well, good for you. Congratulations. Congratulations. It's a big deal. It's a big deal.
[48:52] That whole two hour session was excuses and defenses. People couldn't think about the question you asked with very few exceptions. I've never seen that level of avoidance in one of your live streams. It was really fascinating. It really was fascinating. And it had to wait for the the book to be done congrats steph on the peaceful parenting book thank you doug i appreciate that i appreciate that you don't choose if you win the lottery so people who have been given a good quote excuse in life hold on to it like a winning ticket i've heard people one-up each other, excuses like applying them a number value so i view people who make excuses as sort of environmental toxins you know like if you go into some let's say you're exploring some building it's kind of in the woods and then there's black mold on the wall and the air stinks right the air stinks how long would you hang around or you know you're exploring chernobyl don't do it but if you were right and you guy can count because that's clicking like uh like crazy like a metronome metronome on cocaine you get out right it's an environmental toxin.
[50:00] So there's a war inertia versus energy excuses versus self-ownership, and when you're around people if you have self-ownership they will try to kill that in you and you will try to rouse self-ownership in them.
[50:22] Somebody says downloaded the Peaceful Parenting e-book yesterday and I'm loving it I found myself skipping around as if it were a reference book and in every section I found useful and relatable arguments." Well, thank you. When you get to the proof section, the science is just wild. It was far greater than I thought of when I was starting the book, so I appreciate that and thank you for the tip. That's very kind. All right.
[50:57] Oh, there's a typo. Thank you. No, listen, I appreciate that. I mean, I appreciate that. All right. What are your thoughts about meditation or exercising? How to think in accordance with emotional regulation and redefining beliefs about the self and how that might change behavior? Sorry, that's too vague a question. I can't follow that. I'm happy to hear it refreshed. raised. I've been following since 2016. You changed my life and haven't donated a dollar to you. One day I will make up for it. But for now, keep going, my friend. 2016 is eight years. I've changed your life. That's interesting. You haven't haven't donated a dollar. So I've changed your life. You've cost me money. And you haven't donated a dollar.
[51:56] That's interesting. That's interesting. If you could tell me why, I would appreciate that. I really would. I mean, you can do it anonymously, right? You just get a prepaid visa or crypto or something. You can donate anonymously if you're concerned about that. Yeah, no hate or anything. I'm just genuinely curious why I would have changed your life and you're costing me money. All right, because, I mean, every listener, I love you guys to death, but you all understand, every listener costs me money, right? It all costs us money because there's four of us working here. So every listener costs us money, right? Server storage, bandwidth costs, server costs, you all need some income, and cameras and audio and processing and time, and we have like a half infinity of third-party sources, so every listener costs us money. And I mean, obviously, I'm completely thrilled that I have changed your life. I think that's wonderful, and I really appreciate that. But I'm curious, I suppose.
[53:20] As to why I haven't changed your life enough for reciprocity. Right? Reciprocity. Because donations are... Is something that indicates reciprocity, right? Donations is you're not in a parent-child relationship where I just provide you resources and you don't have to provide anything back. It's kind of growing to inequality and saying, well, we're two adults and we should exchange value, right? And again, the value doesn't have to be money, right? All right, so let's see here. Steph, for example, your friend that dropped out from the double major, how would not making excuses look like? Would it be him focusing on single major and working harder? Basically, not making excuses is finding a solution.
[54:15] Well, he chose the double major, and the work turned out to be brutal. So he went from things being, and we've all done this, right? Going from things being easy to things being hard. Haven't we all had that? So when you get further and further up in your expertise, at some point you hit a limit. And it goes from being easy to being hard. So let's say he's got an ability of 100. My friend's got an ability of 100. And the school requirements are 20. So he's five times better than he needs to be for high school. So he just sits down, he blazes through it. It's easy and so on, right? Now, when things are easy for you, you have a choice, right? When things are easy for you, you have a choice. When things are easy for you, you have the choice to make them as hard as possible to really challenge yourself, or you have the choice to say, well, I guess I'm just so wonderful and fantastic that everything's easy to me because I'm such a genius and I'm so brilliant to this, that, and the other, right?
[55:37] Some things in philosophy are easy for me, and some things in philosophy are hard for me. The Peaceful Parenting book, which I've now been working on for like 14 months, I mean, it's 800 pages, and a lot of it is very technical in terms of this sort of scientific and biological support for peaceful parenting. It was a brutal experience, man. I don't think I'll ever do anything like that again. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever do anything like that again. Yeah, because that was about as brutal as things get. Plus, you know, I mean, sort of hate to hop on the same topic, but sort of lack of support from the community did not exactly help that process, right? So that was brutal. UPB was a brutal experience. I mean, essential philosophy was a joy to write. I literally, I had a voice dictation software, hooked up a computer on a treadmill, and I was just walking fast and writing the book by dictating it. It was just glorious and easy and great and fun. Right? I find that because I've done so many call-in shows, the general pattern of call-in shows, although the insights are different each time, the general pattern is pretty easy to do. Right? So there's stuff that's easier for me, and then there's stuff that's harder for me. Now, if all I did was focus on the stuff that was the easiest for me.
[56:58] Then I would risk vanity. Did you see what I'm saying? I would risk the toxin called vanity. Well I'm so good at this and it's so easy for me I can't believe it's difficult for everyone else right because you avoid that which is difficult which fuels, the toxin called vanity and we're all tempted for that and we should enjoy the things that we're good at I'm not saying anything like that, but I my friend who was five times better than he needed to be for high school math.
[57:35] Should have pushed himself with high school math and said, well, this is so easy. I have to, I can go to a secondhand bookstore. I can buy some university textbooks. I can just work harder. I can go deeper. I can really challenge myself as opposed to, well, this is just easy, you know? Oh, so easy, right? And this happens with athletes as well, right? So athletes that are top dog in high school are mediocre in college and bottom of the trough in professional sports, right? So if you just happen to be a really great, like naturally you've got a lot of talent with tennis and you can just beat everyone in your local tennis league, then you should stop playing in your local tennis league and you should start playing people who can really challenge you. Because, I mean, isn't it kind of the case that stuff you're easy at, stuff that's easy for you is really boring? Doesn't it get really boring? And isn't it kind of a little embarrassing? You know, isn't it kind of a little bit embarrassing? Thank you.
[58:34] To, you know, beat people who are bad at something you're good at, like naturally good at. So what he should have done, in my humble opinion, is when, like, you know, metaphysics and epistemology are not my particular preferences, but I've worked very hard on those to try and become better, because it's really hard, right? The relationship between sense data and language is tough, right? And I did this sort of, was it 17 or 19 part introduction to philosophy series many years ago. I go through my whole philosophy ground up. How do you get to all the way through to politics, right? And abstract morality from sense data, from nothing, right? That's my Cartesian meditation, right? Descartes. So that's hard. That was hard work to organize my thoughts. And as I've said before, I was so frustrated at not having a rational proof of secular philosophy that I just sat down with a big cup of coffee and said, I'm not getting out from this table until I've solved it. 20 years, I hadn't solved it. I mean, that's terrible. So my friend should have said, well, I'm way too smart and talented for high school math, so I should really get to the edge of your abilities. That's where the fun is. It's at the edge of your abilities.
[59:59] I don't have any show notes for today, right? It's ad lib. It's the edge of my abilities. I'm doing, Friday night, I had no idea I was going to talk about the lack of feedback from peaceful parenting in my other books. Right? I had.
[1:00:19] No idea I was going to do that. And I did all of that stuff on the fly. It was a really challenging conversation, you know, balancing criticism with humility, with don't attack yourself like a really challenging conversation all on the fly all ad-libbed right so it's like solo jazz in front of a giant audience right because i'm aware that everything i do is going to be reviewed in the future by both malevolent and benevolent eyes right so it's a uh it's a tough job and i like the challenge of the live streams i really do.
[1:01:04] So, let's see here. Somebody says, same with anything. It's why I feel the world is trying to tell me I have nothing of value to offer the world. I sympathize with Steph, yeah. Silver Spider says, when I was a kid, my dad, who once owned a company, gave up and told me advice like, no matter how good you are, someone will always be better. It took me until my 30s to start my life with your advice. D&D stats analogy, LOL, I'll allow it. Immoral people enjoy crushing weaker opponents. Moral people do not.
[1:01:40] Yeah, I mean, if somebody beats somebody else really badly in tennis, right? I don't look at the person who, you know, just won in straight sets, you know, 40 love, 40 love. Like, I don't view someone like that as being any good at all. I view that person as being incredibly vain and ridiculous, right? Right. And look, we've all, we've all played with people. I mean, I play pickleball with my wife. I play tennis with my wife and you know, she's, you know, five foot two, right? She's got little Tyrannosaurus arms and so on. So I have to adjust my play as opposed to when I'm playing, you know, I was playing in a league and I ended up winning and, but I really had to adjust my play. I have to adjust my play with my wife because I enjoy playing with her and it's great exercise and it's It's a great deal of fun, but I'm not going to like crush her, you know, every 10, 10, zero, 10, like that, that would be sad and pathetic. Right. And, um, so on and there's stuff she's better at than me. Right. So, um.
[1:02:47] My friend should have been like, well, this work is too easy for me. So he should up the difficulty until it's a real challenge. Right. I mean, if I was, I remember I, I've consciously trolled people many years ago on Twitter. Um, I was at a gym, I think it was in Poland or something. And there was like these two and a half pound weights that were pink. And I took a photo of them and said, just finished my workout feeling the burn. Right. And, um, that was very funny because, you know, I mean, I do 30, 35 pounders for my curls. And like, again, I'm no big muscle guy, but you know, I, I try and work it so that it's a sweat and my heart's pounding and, and, you know, there's a nice burn afterwards and all of that. So yeah, the little pink tassel weights, you know, just finished my workout. Right. It's like that, um, the guy who's taking a picture of a selfie, uh, and he's a, he's sweating like a pig and, and, and he's like, looks exhausted. And he's like, it's seven o'clock in the morning at the gym, just finished taking a shit time for my workout. And it's like, that is hilarious. Hilarious. That is hilarious, because he's overweight, of course, right? So, yeah, you up the difficulty until it's a challenge. Like, the only reason I'm still doing philosophy is because I'm not doing the same philosophy. The only reason I'm still doing philosophy is because I'm not doing the same. This is a new conversation, right? Where would you draw the line between excuses and explanations? explanations.
[1:04:10] So excuses are giving yourself an out for failing to achieve. You're always responsible for failing to achieve, always responsible for failing to achieve. Because let's say it was impossible for my friend to do the math and physics double major, right? He's responsible for that because he chose the math and physics double major. You're always responsible for failing to achieve.
[1:04:36] So excuses and explanations. Explanations are usually of rational limitations, right? So why am I not a famous singer? Because I'm not a very good singer, right? I enjoy singing. I'm, you know, an average, okay, amateur can kind of carry a tune a little bit, but I don't have a great voice. So the explanation as to why, like, I love to sing, but why would I not be a singer? Because I don't have a great voice, right? So that's not an excuse. That's an explanation. That's an actual fact, right? And for me to try and be a singer would be a waste of time. It would hurt my voice because I'd have to strain it. And it's just not the thing, right? It's just not the thing.
[1:05:15] So explanations are, here's why I didn't do something that was not going to be productive. And, but you don't need those. People don't sit there and say, Steph, why, why aren't you a famous singer? Like, whatever, right? Why aren't you this, that, and the other, right? If, you know, I was like the 1% of people who were accepted to the National Theatre School in Canada. And they told me, because I went there for acting and playwriting, and they said, look, you're such a good actor. You should forget the playwriting, just be an actor, right? And why did I not pursue acting? Because I found the people repulsive in the acting world, like skin-crawlingly repulsive. I had physical symptoms of almost like allergies or something. I just found the people in the acting world to just be repulsive. So I just... Is that an explanation? It's not an excuse. An excuse is I really tried to be an actor. I failed, and I made it up. I made up some... Everybody just hates me for no reason, right? Or reasons i can't explain now the explanation like people said well you went to theater school and you were a good actor why don't you why don't you act right and it's like well because i find the acting world repulsive it's like government paid it's it's uh all about propaganda and there's no real authenticity or curiosity there's no exploration of the human condition there's just ways to railway spike drive into socialism into people's heads right so.
[1:06:43] Oh man says someone the people who constantly talk about their hardships a lot of people like that are the black pill looks like everything looks are everything crowd that's growing with zoomers yeah, Auto-tune Steph, you could be like T-Pain. Yeah, yeah. Well, and if you look at someone who has a wonderful, glorious voice, look at someone like Justin Bieber, right? One of the most successful singers and a great performer too. It's sort of underrated. And he's miserable. He's absolutely miserable. Yes, the Intro to Philosophy series was recently remastered and it's in premium.freedomain.com. The premium content manager, premium.freedomain.com. you can have a look at all of the great stuff. Thumbs up under the video helps the locals algorithm also. Let's smash it, people. Quite right. Thank you for the tip. Thank you for the tip.
[1:07:41] All right. So I think we are going to go to, you know what?
[1:07:49] Let me give you this. since we're here. Here are here are your links to the Peaceful Parenting book 40 years of my life. All distilled in one grueling 14 month journey from hell. I'm going to pass this over so that you can see it. All right. The beginning of me paying you back hardest thing in life is letting go of the idea that you can change your family for the better. Oh, thank you, Anam. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. If I have an addiction such as smoking, in order to suppress recurring bad emotions such as guilt from past trauma may be chanted. Yeah, it's not that, though. So if you smoke to suppress recurring bad emotions, it's because the bad emotions keep coming. The addiction is to manage the continual stimuli, right? The continual negative stimuli.
[1:08:53] It's not that you were just permanently traumatized from the past. It's because you continue to be traumatized in the present, and you have to get to a place where you're no longer traumatized. My view, I'm no expert on this, but in my experience, bad habits diminish and vanish, when you are no longer in the process of being continually traumatized. So the addiction is to the old bad relationships the other stuff, like whatever smoking or drinking or drugs right the actual addiction is to the bad relationships which continues to traumatize you and then you manage the pain of those bad relationships with the addiction right but the real addiction is to the re-trauma re-traumatizing and that's because you're pleasing those who have done you harm rather than, those what's beneficial to yourself, All right, so there's your bookie books once more.
[1:09:51] All right. Will there be a physical version of peaceful parenting? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Honestly, it's hard, right? I mean, so people are like, well, I'm going to wait till it's finished to read it. And it's like, well, you know, I'm releasing it in segments, like I started releasing it last October. I'm releasing it in segments in order to get feedback, right? Because it was grueling. I mean, I really felt like I was carrying the ring across mortar with no help and support, really. It was tough. It was tough. So the physical version of peaceful parenting, I don't know, man. It's a lot of work to put that together. It's easier to do an e-book, of course, right? It's a lot of work to put that together. And my experience has been people say, I want the book, I want the book, I want the book. And then I spend a month or two creating the physical book and nobody buys it. So um i uh i don't i don't have any particular desire to do it and i have to be responsible to the income of the company right i mean this is a business concern as well as a save the world mad mission um so if i apply the resources time effort energy and money to produce the physical book there has to be a return on investment right otherwise i'm not.
[1:11:12] Handling people's donations responsibly if that makes sense right so if i put a month or two into creating a physical version and it doesn't sell many copies then that has been disrespectful to the donations because i've used them for something that hasn't been productive so i'm always sort of conscious of what i spend money on because it comes through your support free domain.com slash donate so um i don't know i don't know i'll have to see i'll have to sort of feel my way along this, right? So I think we are going to, what if we donate towards the book, prepay for the book? That's a possibility, but what if, the problem is, of course, I have to sort of judge the level of interest that people have in the book as a whole, and it hasn't been very high. Right? It just hasn't been very high. So the problem is, what if I take the time to set all of that up, and I publicize it, and then we don't get much money, then I have to return everything. Because then, like, I just don't see how that's productive as a whole. And I have a lot of experience putting books out. I have a lot of experience putting books out. And way back in the day, there was a merch shop, right? There was a merchandise shop because people were like, I want t-shirts, I want this, I want that, I want the other. And it's like, and then nobody really bought anything. So it's just kind of a continual circle that goes on in this community. And after 18 years, I'm pretty aware of it. So, all right. So here's what we're going to do. If you are a donor.
[1:12:42] Let's see here congratulations on the book thank you I appreciate that the peaceful parenting revolution will bring humanity out of a second dark age I hope so, The research in Peaceful Parenting Book is mind-blowing stuff, a real eye-opener. I'm not finished listening, but the chapters are really, really well done. Thank you for your hard work, Steph. Much love to you, and thanks to Jared for that as well. He did a lot of that research. And it's really, really great stuff. All right, so we're going to flip over. Only publish if you meet the donation requirements. Oh, I understand that. Thank you for the blindingly obvious. You know I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years. Well, you know, if people are going to donate, only publish if you meet the donation requirements. But then I have to refund everyone if I don't, right? Like, I'm just, why? I mean, I can just, why, why, why? I mean, I could just keep doing shows and getting donations and all of that, right? So, and it's, you know, it's boring and dull and tedious and detail crap to, you know, if you're making a physical book, it's like, well, what's the size? What's the, you know, what quality are you going to use? How, you know, you have to change the spine to the right size. And oh my God, it's just, it's a huge finicky mess, right?
[1:13:51] I love the audiobooks. Thank you for your time you've poured into these. And also, I have to manage my enthusiasm. So let's say I say, oh, here's a place you can donate, and if there's enough donations, we'll produce a physical book, and let's say I get $15, right? Don't refund? I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right. I don't think, say, donate for the physical book, and then I don't produce the physical book, then I would have to refund. And what if, yeah, and what if it's just like $50 or $25 bucks or whatever, that's kind of depressing. I do have to manage my own levels of enthusiasm. So I have no particular desire or plan to, but we don't know for sure. All right. So we're going to switch over. If you're a donor, check where you are for the Skype link, and we can talk more about what we were talking about on Friday. If people are interested, because I think it's a very, very interesting topic, there's a lot of potential growth there. So I hope that people will come and join that. And if you want to donate to join that conversation, I will give you a link right now. Now I will give you a link right now. You can join for free, join in the conversation, join for free. And if you don't find it's worthwhile.
[1:15:03] If you don't find that it is worthwhile, you can cancel before the end of the month. And my only excuse for not giving feedback is that I've not read the book yet.
[1:15:14] Time is an issue, but me a couple for not making time. Well, you have time for the live streams. I generally don't believe the no time stuff. I generally don't believe it. All right, so I'll join you guys over on Skype. Give me five minutes, and I'll be over in there. And thanks, everyone, so much for your time. If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate. I would really, really appreciate your support for the show. And remember, if you subscribe at subscribestar.com slash freedomain or freedomain.locals.com, then you can get the Peaceful Parenting audiobook. You know, it's 23 hours. It's a 23 hour audiobook. A lot of it very, very, I mean a lot of it's very passionate, very powerful. A lot of it's very technical and gives you the entire scientific reason as to why Peaceful Parenting is so essential like what happens to the body in the state of trauma so I hope that you will join us and give me five and we'll talk over there and lots of love everybody. Thank you for coming by today. A great pleasure to chat with you and I will talk to you later. Bye.
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